Burkina Faso
IntraHealth International, a Global Communities Partner, is working synergistically with local partners to advance uptake of maternal, newborn, and child health and family planning services in Burkina Faso and across Francophone West Africa.
In Burkina Faso, IntraHealth International, a Global Communities Partner, works in tandem with ministry officials, health workers, youth advocates, mayors, and other local and regional stakeholders to improve the health and well-being of families and communities.
Specifically, we're focused on helping the health sector:
- stop preventable maternal and child deaths
- achieve national goals to increase modern contraceptive prevalence
- improve maternal nutrition and feeding practices for infants and young children
- ensure the health, nutrition, and well-being of mothers, newborns, and infants.
We're accomplishing this by helping health officials integrate high-impact interventions, building the capacity of youth and civil society reproductive health advocates, and mobilizing resources for high-quality, integrated maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH), family planning, and nutrition services.
Current Programs
INSPiRE
Through this regional award from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Communities/IntraHealth is working to accelerate family planning uptake and improve MNCH indicators in the critical pre- and post-pregnancy period through integrated client-centered postpartum family planning (PPFP), MNCH, and nutrition services delivered at scale in Francophone West Africa. INSPiRE is demonstrating that providing a comprehensive package of essential services to mother and child during the same visit—at four entry points: antenatal care, delivery, postpartum care, and essential newborn care/Immunization—improves utilization, quality, and cost-effectiveness of services.
As of June 2025, INSPiRE’s integration model is being implemented in 14,826 health facilities in Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Togo, through synergistic coordination with the Francophone Africa Regional Community of Practice for Integrated PPFP/MNCH-N, chaired by the West African Health Organization, which supports resource and partner mobilization for scale-up. Since 2019, demonstration sites of the project have seen a 275% increase in PPFP use in supported health facilities along with a 380% increase in well-baby visits for growth monitoring.
The Challenge Initiative (TCI)
TCI is a global program led by the William H. Gates Sr. Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Since 2016, TCI has been implemented in Francophone West Africa by Global Communities partner IntraHealth, which serves as the regional hub. Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Bayer AG, TCI works to expand access to high-quality family planning services across the region.
To achieve TCI’s vision of healthier cities at scale, the Francophone West Africa hub partners with local governments in 29 cities to rapidly expand a core package of proven, high-impact interventions. The hub also works to strengthen political and technical leadership, as well as the management and coordination of local health systems. Cities self-select into the program through a competitive process and are required to contribute their own resources to implement activities. With TCI’s support, cities in Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Niger, Senegal, and Togo have mobilized the political will, investments, and resources needed to expand access to family planning. As a result, the number of additional contraceptive users rose from 66,225 in the first phase (2016–2020) to 273,114 during the NextGen phase (as of June 2025). Over the same period, local government contributions increased from 42% ($423,924) to 54% ($952,222).
Previous Programs
Ouagadougou Partnership Coordination Unit (OPCU)
After the pivotal family planning conference in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in 2011, multiple donors joined nine governments to initiate the Ouagadougou Partnership, committed to elevate family planning in West Africa. With support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, IntraHealth managed the Ouagadougou Partnership Coordination Unit (OPCU) from 2012 to 2022, which raised the partnership’s visibility and helped member countries develop and implement costed implementation plans for family planning. Between 2012 and 2015, the partnership was responsible for 1.18 million new users of modern family planning, a 40% regional increase. Building on this success, the nine governments embarked on an acceleration phase and had reached 7.1 million users by 2022. IntraHealth transferred the OPCU to Senegal-based Speak Up Africa in 2021.
Civil Society for Family Planning (CS4FP)
With funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Dutch Embassy, the IntraHealth-led CS4FP project (2011-2020) worked with adolescents and young adults to collaboratively design solutions to improve the ability of youth to make informed decisions and better access respectful, quality family planning services. CS4FP helped establish and support national civil society coalitions for family planning in nine West African countries to raise a collective voice in planning with governments to meet family planning commitments. The project partnered with 364 youth ambassadors from five countries to reach more than 100,000 adolescents through youth-led campaigns.
Past IntraHealth Programs
- Global Health Supply Chain-Procurement and Supply Management (GHSC-PSM) (USAID), 2016-2022
- Support to Primary Health Care Strengthening Project (Islamic Development Bank LLF), 2019-2020
- Evidence to Action (E2A) (USAID), 2011-2019
Impact
94,320
participants reached with essential reproductive
health services between June 2024-May 2025
79%
percentage of antenatal care visits
during which family planning counseling and nutritional advice were offered
46%
percentage of women who received FP services within 48 hours after giving birth with GATPA and whose newborn was breastfed within one hour of birth
Resources
News
From Commitment to Care: Sustaining Integrated Health and Family Planning Services in Burkina Faso
By Idrissa Derra, Community Health Technical Specialist, INSPiRE Two years ago, the CSPS Urbain de Pô health center in southern Burkina Faso began delivering integrated maternal and child health, nutrition, and family planning services through a model supported by the Gates Foundation-funded INSPiRE project. Since then, midwife Rachelle Gamba and her team have seen rising…